about how i do my photo essays.

heres how i do them. briefly.

first i have my own server/host situation. you will need to host your own stuff unless you’re incredibly clever, but i imagine if you were so clever you’d host your own stuff.

you can get hosted in a variety of places for under $10/month. my man Os charges $20/month but his solution is twice as good as most, and you hardly (if ever) see the busblog go down. to me thats worth a $100 tip each year.

next, i use two programs: Dreamweaver and Photoshop.

Photoshop allows me to tweak the pictures. Because I’m lazy and untalented, all I ever really use in Photoshop nowadays is Auto Levels and Auto Contrast. sometimes to cheat i will blur things in the background or i will darken areas that i want to write over.

sometimes i will use Paint Dabs or something dumb to make it look “arty“. It rarely works.

sometimes i just want to totally parody something, and if i take my time, it will sorta work.

dont get distracted/intimidated by photoshop, sometimes the simple ones are the best.

But the main reason I use Photoshop with every picture is to cut down the image size so it will load faster.

Mostly, the photos are usually untouched. Not because im such a badass photographer but because I am lazy and I havent ever learned how to properly use Photoshop.

The other program I use is Dreamweaver. I know an elementary amount of HTML, but when I use Dreamweaver, i use the “Design” portion only. Sometimes I will use “Design & Code” if i cant figure out why something isnt working. But mostly I do the WYSIWYG.

I only do a few things on Dreamweaver: my favorite is the three column table. I know all the cool kids use CSS and turn their noses on Tables, but im an old man and I know what works for me. And until they can beat my ass with their fancy code they should just chill.

my obey page is the classic three column table. it allows you to put text on different sides of an image.

if you dont use a table, you end up having to cheat like on this page. on that page you can put text on the left side of the sign, but to get something on the right side you have to go down a few lines and then align right.

again im sure CSS has solutions to all of this, but i dont have the time.

Dreamweaver is also my FTP. After I have figured out what picture I’m going to use, and I have typed my text into the code, I FTP the page over to my server using Dreamweaver.

Then I put a picture into photoshop, shrink it or crop it so that it will look nice on the blog, and then I link that picture to the photo essay.

Again, nothing that I am doing is new. I have been doing photoessays for years. I use old programs and old versions of those programs.

i do like it when people mimic my style and give me props when they do photo essays.

imitation is the highest form of flattery, and i am often quite flattered.